


Agency Troubles

by Eccentric_Time_Traveller



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: I really love the idea of Time Agencies so I decided to play with it for this fic, Introduction Arc!, OC Companion “Played” by Angel Coulby, OC Doctor “Played” by Guy Henry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27845239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eccentric_Time_Traveller/pseuds/Eccentric_Time_Traveller
Summary: Cassandra Brock just cannot catch a break. She’s late for work. She just met some weirdo calling himself ‘The Doctor’ who gives her a vague warning. And a syndicate of time travellers want her dead.Tough Day, am I right?
Kudos: 4





	1. Morning Problems

_**London. 2014. 29th of April. Tuesday. Mid-Morning. 08:00 Hours to 08:20 Hours.** _

Cassandra was often late. 

Every job she’s had, she had been constantly late. The reasons would always vary, sleep problems, traffic jam, just plain bad luck in some cases. It was completely bizarre, given that she was normally the most organised person she knew. Today it was her alarm at fault, and right now she was internally calling herself an idiot for putting off replacing the batteries for a good week or so.

Racing through the streets of London, she found herself forcing her way through the billowing mass of people that blanketed over the pavement. At the next street corner, she pulled herself up short, just in time to avoid running out in front of a black cab.

Once across the main road, she messily dodged and weaved her way through the human tide, slipping herself through the monolithic sea of working class Londoners, past the uniform London architecture, an ever-expanding skyline of glass and steel, nearly bumping into someone as she tried to avoid splashing through one of the puddles that laid across her path.

Some would find the environment of London to be a confused, overpopulated mess, but to her, it was the throbbing hub of social life, a bustling patchwork creation of dozens of different groups and ideas. London was new to her, but more than anything, London was _exciting_. In London, she could feel the crisp wind on her face and the shining sun on her skin. Completely different to the “tranquil” and “peaceful” life she had back in the country side. Oh god, so many farms…

Casandra was woman of average height and looked to be around 40. Her round face comprised of pert lips and a noble brow, a tall but soft nose, and her eyes were a respectful light brown that swung a golden hue when the sun bounced off them. Her skin was dark and her hair was darker, practically a mess of black curls that went down to her shoulders. All in all she had a total ambience of stern respect.

She always wore a suit to wherever she went, and always with no tie. A big fan of “casual professionalism.” Whatever that actually meant to her. Today her outfit was composed of a midnight blue suit and a brown leather handbag which loosely hung from her shoulder, the look was completed with her polished black shoes and a gold engagement ring.

After another couple of streets, she left the tumult of traffic behind, coming into a more settled area.She hurriedly strode across the pavement, taking a sharp left turn, before stoping in front of a large pair of open wrought iron gates. A small brass plate fixed to the top of the gate bore the words: “Mountain Oak Secondary School. Founded in 1963. If you can dream it, you can achieve it!”

The last line on the gate was the school’s motto, Cassandra thought it was a good message but that it had become obnoxious once it was soullessly plastered and tacked onto everything owned by the school. After she found out that even the bloody cups had it, it started to feel artificial, like they were trying to sell you something dodgy.

Mountain Oak was a modest school in South London. Oh and I do mean modest. This is the type of school that Tories fight for, and the type of school that has that. strange precise feeling of a quaint quintessential Britishness that other countries (you know who I’m thinking of) have loved to fetishise for the last decade or so, always skirting the edge between Middle & Upper Class so it can come off as diverse while never touching anyone who lived in a council house with a ten foot pole.

The actual school itself comprised of two long but narrow buildings of around three story’s height, each row had a fire escape and set of stairs leading down to the ground. With acres of crisply cut greenery between the the buildings and two or more walking paths jutting through, leading to the two buildings themselves.

She hurried along through the gate, pausing for a moment to catch her breath, Cassandra flashed a look at her watch. She was nearly fifteen minutes late for work. Oh dear.

For a moment the thought had caused her to lose concentration, which was just enough time to unwittingly bump into the stranger in front of her. The two bodies clashed, like trains colliding into each other, and Cassandra accidentally bashed against the stranger’s head with her own, before clumsily falling backwards, as the stranger made a grunt of pain.

‘Oh god, I’m so sorry,I should’ve watched where I was going. Are you okay?’ Cassandra asked apologetically.

‘No, no. It’s fine. Don’t worry.’ He said as he rubbed his forehead, he seemed to pronounce every word with a refined sense of dignity. His voice was that distinct, specific kind of upperclass poshness, the kind you expect to hear in a period drama.

He offered up his hand politely. She grasped onto it and he pulled her up. She glanced at him; He was remarkably tall man, though a bit on the thin side, who looked to be in his early 50s.

His face was long and gaunt, with probing and incisive eyes that gave the impression they knew more than they could ever let on, a straight nose that gave off an aura of well mannered sophistication, and a dark tousled mop of hair stretching down to the the bottom of his neck which looked oddly casual when compared to the rest of his features.

His clothing was immaculate to say the least; an old suit that comprised of a sombre tailcoat in dark grey, alongside brown boots speckled with flecks of mud, a gold paisley-patterned regency waistcoat which had covered up a flawless white wingtip shirt. The look was completed by the messy black cravat that was loosely tugged around the man’s neck. He would have hardly merited a glance in the smoggy streets of the 1900s, yet in the here and now he was anachronistic.

‘By the way, I know you seem rather busy, but do you happen to know Professor C. Brock? I heard she worked here.’

The question caught her off guard. ‘Well I guess you could say that, I am Professor Brock.’ She said, her voice apprehensive.

‘Ah!’ He said, clasping his hands together. ‘Perfect timing.’ He pulled out an old looking pocket-watch from his waistcoat, inspecting the time. ‘Listen, if you notice any strange or otherwise peculiar events happening around you, I want you to call this number immediately.’ He said, digging the watch back in and pulling a card from his pocket

‘Well should I call you now? This is about as peculiar as you can get if you ask me.’ She joked before glancing at the card, in a very fancy Roman looking font it said “Call The Good Ship Tardis here.” Before being followed by a number she couldn’t be bothered to memorise right now. The card’s text ended with ‘Dr W. Intergalactic Man of Mystery.’

Upon reading the last snippet of the card’s text, Cassandra tried to hold back a laugh, trying to keep up a sense of tact and respect for the loony in front of her.

‘Though I do appreciate the concern, Doctor W.’ She told him, with a slight smirk cracking through. Suddenly a shade of embarrassment showed itself on Dr W’s face.

‘At the time I thought it had a quaint buccaneering feel. I’m more generally known as The Doctor.’ He told her. 

‘Doctor wh-’ Cassandra wanted to inquire, but abruptly stopped when she realised what the W stood for. She playfully laughed. ‘Alright, you got me there. I like that.’

‘I liked it too.’ He said genuinely, ‘But sadly, I have to cut this interaction a tad short. I have things to do, you seem to be late for work, ergo a departure is necessary, have a splendid morning. But again, do call me if anything happens.’

The changed wording from ‘peculiar events’ to ‘anything happens’ came of as a lot more foreboding to Cassandra than she thought he wanted it to.

‘Doctor!’ She hollered to him as he was about to turn a corner by the gate. ‘Why did you hand me this? What is it even for?’

‘Ah, well,’ He said as his eyes darted to the right, he knew that he couldn’t reveal too much too soon. ‘You’ll find out for yourself eventually. But let’s just say that there’s an organisation out there with a vested interest in your well-being, Cassandra.’ He said before skirting a right corner, slipping from her line of sight.

She hurriedly followed him past the corner, peaking her head to look where he would go, but to her surprise; He had disappeared. She looked the other way but he wasn’t there either. She had so many questions, but not enough information to answer even one of them.

She glanced at her watch. She was now twenty minutes late for work. Oh dear…

She ran back down the school grounds before following up the steps which proceeded the frontal building. She walked towards the entrance, turning the copper handle of the wooden doors that lay before her and walking inside. Finding herself in a moderately large room that split off into many directions, first she made a pit stop at the office, making sure to sign in. When asked about being late she blamed it on Traffic before skidding away, pretending to not hear as they tried to bring up how she doesn’t have a car. They assumed she just got a cab.

She found her way to her class. It was a moderately big room, with at least seven rows of twenty chairs from the end of the room to the front, just cutting off in front of her wooden desk and swivel chair in front of an electronic board.

Once she was inside, she was met by the herd of awkward looking students who had blundered in. Some wide eyed and excited to learn, others seemed like they’d be walking in front of traffic any minute.

‘Apologies for the tardiness. Open up your text books and let’s get down to business, shall we? Make sure to be taking notes. Today I’m going to be talking about The Mayerling Tragedy and its effect on world history.’ She busily said before pulling a laptop from her desk and connecting it to the board.

Meticulously, she clicked on her file and opened up a power point. Displaying an image of Crown Prince Rudolf and Mary Freiin on the board, the fuzzy blue light illuminated her desk.

‘The Mayerling incident is the series of events surrounding the apparent murder–suicide of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, and his lover, Mary Freiin von Vetsera. 

Rudolf, who was married to Princess Stéphanie of Belgium, was the only son of Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth, and was heir to the Imperial throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

You might see this as just your ordinary suicide pack, Rudolf was stuck in an unhappy marriage and couldn’t get a divorce to marry his mistress, so they ended their lives together rather than go on in secret, but it becomes a lot more complicated when you realise there’s evidence that Rudolf was carrying on affairs with other lovers at the same time.

Rudolf was also reported to ask a previous lover to join him in a death pact, which suggests he had the idea long before Mary entered his life, doesn’t it?’ Her words slipping into a professional cadence.

‘In your text books you’ll find different sources, contrast and compare between them, before writing down why you think Rudolf killed himself, remember to write in P.E.E.L paragraphs.’ She mentioned offhandedly as she gazed into her computer.

She couldn’t help but think of the mystery, an eccentric stranger handing you a note and gives a vague warning? She could never resist a good mystery, especially when it was practically handed to her on a silver platter. Ever since she was a wee’ lass when she’d been trying to figure out the answers to Sherlock Holmes stories before Sherlock did, she actually beat him to it a few times too.

Recently she’d found herself fascinated by online mysteries. Long and abandoned discussion boards eternally stuck in a snapshot of the past, obituaries taking the form of half-finished profiles, and the silence that fills the gaps between. A constant ghostly record of thoughts and feelings, fads and senses of humour. There was always sense of reminiscing, escaping from the ever shortening attention span of the human consciousness. To Cassandra, the Internet was many things, an archive, a graveyard, but more importantly, it was a mystery box.

Cassandra quickly opened up Braintrust, the most used search engine in the world. She typed up ‘Dr W. Intergalactic Man of Mystery.’, it recommends her a TV Show: “Professor X: Interdimensional Men of Inquiries.” It was about some family line of professors who travel between different universes.

Her hand tightened with annoyance. She knew that Dr Who was obviously a fake name, but it was so unique, it sounded like a stage name. She thought it could be tracked down, she was mistaken.

She glanced at the card again, ‘Call The Good Ship Tardis here.” She swore the word Tardis wasn’t italicised before. She probably just misremembered.

She adroitly typed it up, her fingers stretching with each key. She had wondered whether it even a real word or just something that the supposed doctor made up. She clicked search and the first result to come to her was a conspiracy website on Urban Legends, things like Mothman, Charley No-Face, The Puebla Tunnels and like. There was a specific page for “The Ancient Doctors & Their Tardis.” She was skeptical of course, but it was as good a chance as any.

It was an utter conspiracy. It seemed this Doctor was the embodiment of human history, he’d seen it all. He gifted fire to man and he saw what we did with it. He was there at the Titanic, the R-101, D.B Cooper, Hitler’s rise to power, the fall of Rome, JFK, if you can think of any historical event, you can bet that he (and sometimes she) was there.

A primordial being who was ever shifting, ever incarnating, thousands of iterations, both young and old, both fat and thin, they were all encompassing, no demographic unturned.

Hundreds of images with supposed Doctors, a pale man with slicked back hair in a green suit, a young man with long brown hair in Edwardian dress, an old woman with short white hair, a skinhead in a U-Boat jacket.

There was only one thing that all The Doctors had, a blue police box, but even that changed appearances, swinging from different hues of blue, getting bigger and gettingsmaller, but always bearing the same words. “Police Public Call Box”

There were different theories and discussion on what The Doctors even were.

Some said that there were multiple Doctors, it was an organisation of immortals that existed since the dawn of human history. Some said it was a single person, an immortal shapeshifter changing forms whenever they liked. Some simply thought they were a function of the universe, a force that came into being whenever the universe asked them to. Others thought they were a group time travellers, taking a cruise across time and space.

Articles of Doctors sprayed from her computer and into her brain, wrapping around her frontal lobe and burning itself into her mind. She looked through the hundreds of iterations, skimming from face to face, to see if any of them matched The Doctor she knew. None of them matched. Little did she know that as she searched for information, she was being stalked by something beyond anything she’s seen before, an entity that was entirely devoted to her death.

Abruptly, Cassandra heard a faint knock coming from her classroom door. She told the visitor ‘Come in’ and Jeffrey Thompson came through.Jeffrey was a Maths Teacher from a few rooms away. He was a skinny lad with closely cropped brown hair with a wide dome of a forehead and pencil thin eyebrows which lazily hung over dull and baggy blue eyes, and awispy five o’clock shadow that made him look perpetually disheveled.

‘Uh, yeah. Cassandra?’ He asked, in a kind of lazily manor. His eyes looked inhumanly glossy, almost like they’d been glazed over with wax.

‘Yes?’ She spoke, slightly disgruntled by the interruption.

‘I’m uh, gonna need you to come with me down to the office.’ He told her.

After hearing that, something sharp found its way sliding up her ribs, prodding against her spine. Cassandra knew this had to be about her being late all the time, it just had to be. What else could it be?

‘Why?’ She asked, discernibly. Her voice was sharp and quick, like a jab to the kidney.

‘I dunno,’ He shrugged noncommittally. ‘Headmaster said, he didn’t mention what for.’ The words slurred from his mouth like a spilt slushy.

‘Okay, alright then.’ She murmured before telling her class to continue on, that she’d only be 5 minutes. Normally a TA would be perfect for this scenario yet for some ungodly reason, the school didn’t have TAs. It was lunacy at its most deranged.

Cassandra drifted along after Jeffrey, always keeping track to loiter behind him, she thought he wouldn’t be able to tell if she was anxious if he couldn’t see her. After a few minutes they found themselves at the office, it was a small and barren room with drab beige walls that smelt of glue and stale yogurt, there wasn’t a lot inside it, just a few swivel chairs and a desk.  


There was a breeze which glided through the room, prickling up Cassandra’s skin, leaving a trail of icy goosebumps behind it. Soon Jeffrey left her to her own devices, sodding off as she found herself waiting timidly in the room, he was grumbling something about how ‘The guy will show up soon.’

She didn’t want to lose another job. Especially with her wedding coming up so soon. What would Sarah think? Oh, she should not have thought of that. Now she couldn’t help but imagine Sarah’s face if she told her that she was sacked again. On a teacher’s salary they were already barley making by, if she lost her job now... Cassandra tried to shove those thoughts away, but they stuck to her like moss on a tree.

Soon enough she found herself snapped away from the train of thought by the arrival of... A shadow? Yes, a shadow! A moving statue of black had just stridden in!

Cassandra found herself crushed by feeling of unease upon looking at the statue, her head was throbbing and the world had stopped making sense. Whatever that thing was, it shouldn’t have ever existed.

To explain why these feelings rose within her, you must understand that when you look at someone, your eyes are simply sending a message to your brain, a message that it only got thanks to light bouncing off the surface you’re looking at into your retina. This is also why you can’t see in pitch blackness. There simply isn’t any light for your eyes to effectively to send a meaningful message.

So what would happen if your eyes found something that was constantly changing? Where each time the light bounces into your retina it would be showing a different image; a bunch of different people constantly overlaying and swapping out with each other every single millisecond. We all know the human brain isn’t good with overstimulation or confusing information, that’s why people get sick in cars.

If it was staring at something that was simply too much a pain in the arse to process, how would it react? One can assume two things would happen.

A: You’d get a monster migraine. Imagine the feeling of having a toothache, a earache, a headache, and a hungover all at once, and then imagine the insides of your brain got rattled by a whisk. Also make sure to drop a brick on your scalp from a high distance for good measure.

B: Your brain would just stop trying to process it, it would register that an entity was there but any details of the entity, like height, race, facial features, clothing would be completely blank, your brain would just register it as a void. A hole in the world.

The only details that seemed to stay consistent with this entity was that it was black, a deep true illusory blackness, it was like staring into the vastness of the night sky, just looking at it made you feel insignificant, that you were so inconsequential that you didn’t even deserve to see the full picture of this entity. The other detail was the two burning rubies that were chiselled into the skin, resembling a pair of blazing red eyes.

Perhaps the red eyes were intentional on the entity’s part, as a type of scare tactic, perhaps it was the brain trying to warn you that something unnatural was going on, after all red was the colour of fire and of fury, everyone knows that. You ask anyone on the street what emotion the colour red is and nine times out of ten they’ll say ‘Anger’, ‘Rage’ or some variation of the two. Regardless, red eyes were not a good sign.

The entity took a step forward, its movements were sleek and suave, yet ever so clearly meticulous and calculated. It raised its hand forthrightly, its fingers were gangly and needle-like.

Cassandra’s arms jutted to the side, rabidly grabbing the swivel chair next to her, desperation surging through every single one of her stretching muscle fibres. Holding it above her head, she sent it flying towards the entity. The chair bashed against the entity’s head, causing it to flinch, if only for a moment. Cassandra took a mad dash out of the office. She could feel the wind pulling back her legs as they went up and down with all their force.

A fire alarm throbbed through the room, who turned those on?

Cassandra took a left turn, darting up a flight of stairs. The limbering mess of black following behind. Once she was up the stairs, she barged through a door to a hallway, using her back to brace and hold against the door.

To her left was a door to the ICT Room, the window next to the door showing a large array of different computers and children running out of a fire exit, and to her right was a empty Maths Classroom, another window showing her some algebraic equation written on a whiteboard. No one had Maths this period.

 _ **BANG**_ goes the door! The entity was here, and it wasn’t happy. _**BANG**_ it goes again! Before she knows it, _**CRACK**_ goes the door and a dark hand busts through! 

Cassandra slides under the hand, picking herself up as the hand finds the doorknob. She skirts through the maths classroom, sending herself through the fire exit at the back of the class, swerving along down the fire exit stairs.

Rows and rows of students were standing in lines, each with their head of form standing at the front. Cassandra took a glance behind as she rushed down, only to her surprise to find that the entity was… gone? Just a few minutes ago she had heard it chasing after her, but now there was nothing, no sound at all.

As she took her final step onto the floor, she uneasily strutted to the crowd of students and teachers. 

‘Where have you been?’ Hodges, the head master asked her. He was a tall man, dwarfing everyone around him by at lease two feet, he was also quite big, practically built like a a fridge, balding with only a few whips of hair left. His oval face amounted to pencil thin eyebrows, baggy and button-like China-blue eyes, and a short thick moustache that made you think of a certain dead Führer.

He always looked professional in his old fancy blue suit, with its red paisley tie. His voice was grouchy, low, and rough, like if a little jagged rock you found on the sidewalk started speaking English.

Cassandra was shocked, she never heard him so loud before. She quickly cobbled up some excuse. ‘Jeffrey told me that you wanted me to go to the office, then the fire alarm happened and I thought I saw a child go upstairs so I went after them, but I was mistaken. I’m really sorry.’

Cassandra was a good liar, it wasn’t something she did often though, she didn’t like deceiving people, she didn’t like being deceived. ‘Treat people how you want to be treated, and treat them with the same respect they treat you.’ was her father’s motto. God bless his soul. Sure it wasn’t something deep or profound, but it felt right regardless.

But of course, what the hell was she going to say? “Oh yeah, got chased by some shadow demon so I was late for the meeting that’s probably about me being sacked, y’know, as one does. No worries!”

Hodges squinted at her, before rasping ‘Oh alright, as long as everyone’s safe, but we still ought to have that meeting.’

It was going to be a long day…


	2. The Meeting

_**London. 2014. 29th of April. Tuesday. Afternoon. 16:30** _   
  


The meeting was claustrophobic to say the least. Though it wasn’t exactly stated per say, Cassandra left with the clear impression that she was on thin bloody ice. If she was late again, she certainly wouldn’t be coming in the next day. She swore that the assistant head, Benjamin Something, was about to blow a blood vessel. Needless to say, she had a lot daunting on her mind.

She was trying not to think of the demon, if that’s what it really was. It was either real, and it can come for her again, or it was all in her head and she was seriously mentally unwell. Both not terribly exciting prospects. The worst thing was that if she actually told anyone about what she saw, she’d be put in an f***ing asylum. 

But the real unnerving thing was that she was starting to consider that maybe she _should_ be put in one. Nothing sends a prickle up your spine like questioning whether you should be committed. 

Cassandra dug a key out from her pocket and shoved it inside the keyhole, accidentally scratching the sides of it. After turning the key and hearing a click, she was inside. 

A lot of people like to say that your living space gradually begins to resemble you. As if you’re mapping the contents of your head onto your surroundings. This was undoubtedly true in the case of Cassandra & Sarah’s small flat on the seventh floor of a South London high-rise tower block.

The place was small enough to where it couldn’t have any vacant space lying around, but big enough to where it wouldn’t be a total inconvenience. Cassandra didn’t mind the lack of space, she was quite utilitarian when it came to stuff like this. But Sarah was annoyed at not having anywhere to pace around when she was trying to think.

Past the front door there was a desk with a photo of the two on it. Both flashing wide grins at the camera with The Eiffel Tower behind them. Cassandra looked to Sarah’s part of the photo.

Brown oily hair which framed a thin and blithe face. A face that held together by a dainty noise, pale lips, and jade eyes which were set narrowly within their sockets, with thin eyebrows that were ever so slightly raised.

The trip to France was lovely, it was part of a family trip by Sarah’s mother. Cassandra surprisingly took well to Sarah’s parents, growing up in the British countryside of the 1980s, they both thought her parents wouldn’t have taken the relationship well. That was why they had kept it a secret for so long, when they did come out in the 90s, her parents didn’t mind. Though it did take some getting used to on their part.

Cassandra left her keys next to the photo on the desk. In front of her was the kitchen, meticulously kept spotless by Cassandra’s own efforts, she took some pride in that. To her left was the living room, its cherry red carpet blanketing the floor.

Cream coloured walls and black curtains. A creamy white sofa and footrest that had an old fuzzy blue blanket on it were laid out, popping out when contrasted with the cherry floor. An unlit fireplace to the side of the room and a small desk with a lamp and far too many books on top next to it. The books were of a wide variety of subjects, high fantasy and sci-fi which belonged to Sarah, crime thrillers and period piece romance novels which were Cassandra’s.

I think you can tell by now that they both had a deep love for the prose. It was even how they met, in the only library of their hometown. Cassandra was almost 17 & Sarah was split in the middle of being 16. Sarah had seen Cassandra there before but simply was too nervous to talk to her. A week or two goes by and one day a book fell out of Cassandra’s bag without her noticing. Sarah handed it back to her and it got a conversation going.One thing progressed into another and well, here they are. Cassandra liked to joke it was like a real life meet cute. Sarah still doesn’t know what “a meet cute” even is.

Suddenly she could hear the shower running. There was only one place it could be coming from. Before the kitchen but further along the hallway was a door to the bathroom. Cassandra made her way and knocked. She couldn’t keep on distracting herself with tidbits from the past.

‘Cassandra?’ Sarah’s voice rang through the door, she sounded like the evening thrush, arresting and winsome.

‘Hey, I’m back. Whose week is it?’ Cassandra let out, she sounded tired and worse for wear.

‘Yours I think.’

‘Good to know, I’ll be making dinner now. I think something simple would be good. Steak and Chips?’ Cassandra continued, almost lifelessly.

Sarah poked her head out from the bathroom door, her hair dripping down her face like petrol, parting the dark locks away, she was surprised by what she saw: Cassandra looked like utter hell, she was paler than monochrome and her hair was more of a mess than usual.

‘Steak and chips sounds fine. But are you okay? You seem a bit...’ She stopped, searching for the right word. ‘Off?’She spoke lightly and concernedly. ‘Detached, I mean.’ The word finally came to her.

‘Trust me, I’m fine. It’s just been an odd day.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘Nothing, I meant that I’ve just felt odd. Nothing odd’s happened.’ She said, quickly. Sarah raised an eyebrow.

Don’t lie to her face like that, come on. Just tell her, you know she’ll support you, she thought.

‘You sure?’ Sarah asked lightly.

‘Absolutely.’ Cassandra affirmed, gesturing a big grin before she made her way to the kitchen.

Sarah pulled her head back into the bathroom. She’s never seen Cassandra like that before. Something was off, she seemed dazed, like her mind was preoccupied. It was... Well, weird, Cassandra was the most attentive person Sarah knew, but now she was just going through the motions. What happened?

Cassandra grabbed a bag from the fridge and pulled out a cold metal tray from the cupboard, before setting the tray down and opening the bag, pouring the chips onto it. She pushed the tray into the oven before shutting it and twitchily turning up the heat.

‘No problem at all.’ Cassandra quietly assured to herself as she pulled two plates from the cupboard, setting them down near the oven.

She thought back throughout the day. She knew she needed to do something about what she saw. She shuffled through her pockets, she liked to do that when she was problem solving, she thought it was calming, though that wasn’t why she was shuffling right now.

She pulled out the card. This Doctor fellow might have been pretending to be an urban legend but it couldn’t have been a coincidence _that thing_ showed up soon after he left. It had to be connected, right?

She delved her hand into her pocket, briskly grabbing her phone, keenly typing down the numbers. After a grating ringtone, it sent her to voicemail.

‘Hello! Welcome to The Good Ship Tardis,’ Even if the sound quality was shoddy, it was, without a doubt, his voice. ‘I’m not quite available right now, leave a message after the-’ Suddenly she heard a loud crash come from the device, ‘Whooo!’ The phone yelled at her before beeping. However, as she was about to leave a message, she heard a knock on the door. 

‘Who is it!?’ Sarah shouted from the bathroom.

‘I don’t know! I’ll check.’

Cassandra whispered to the phone ‘Listen, Doctor. I have to be quick but I need to say, something strange did happen, something _big_. I need to talk to you urgently. Come find me as quick you can, my address is-” Another knock came, cutting Cassandra off, and before she knew it, the message had been sent. Her brow furrowed and clenched her other hand into a fist. Setting the phone down, she strode to the door, testily unlocking it and pulling it open.

...

It was The Doctor. 

‘Hello!’ He cheerily greeted her, offering a handshake. ‘Cassandra, right?’ He asked for a brief second. She nodded. ‘You said something _big_ happened? Do tell.’ He continued, his eyes bulging with intrigue as he marched into the room. 

‘But- I was jus- How did you get here?’ Cassandra questioned.

‘I got your message.’ He said, quite matter of factly.

‘But you were knocking before I had even finished sending it?’

His eyes lit up, ‘Really? Wow, technology is fast. We must truly be living in the modern age.’

‘That doesn’t make se-’ She was about to start.

‘Who is it?’ Sarah yelled from the bathroom.

‘Just someone from work!’ Cassandra spouted. The Doctor smirked and raised his eyebrows. ‘He said I left my bag and he wanted to give it back to me.’

‘Oh, alright.’ Sarah hollered again.

The Doctor looked to the bathroom door and back at Cassandra. Cassandra gestured to The Doctor to follow him in the living room, they sat down on the sofas, Cassandra was leaning forward. Meanwhile The Doctor was leaning back, almost becoming one with the seat. He looked surprisingly comfortable. Here they’d have more than enough time to talk, Sarah always took long showers.

‘Now, back to the matter of hand. What did you see?’ He asked.

Cassandra looked at The Doctor, his eyes peering intently into her own. ‘Well, it was like...’ Her head was getting fuzzy simply by trying to remember it, like trying to get back to a dream after being woken up. ‘Promise you’ll believe me? You won’t think I’m crazy, right?

‘Course not. I’d probably be called crazy too if I told anyone my day-to-day life.’ He smiled.

Cassandra looked apprehensively towards him. She inhaled.

Her voice was wobbly and uneasy. ‘Okay. Well, long story short, I was at work, right, and then one of my coworkers called me to this meeting with my boss, but my boss hadn’t shown up yet, but then, _this thing_ appeared. It was like a living shadow. It had these burning red eyes, and the second I saw it, I just started running and it chased me. I was able to get away from it but it was still following. But then the second I got past a fire escape and got outside, it stopped following.’

Suddenly she stopped. The Doctor leaned forward, looking keenly at her with a look of concern on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ 

‘You!’ She quietly yelled, trying not to alert Sarah. ‘How comes this thing just shows up the second you come up and give me a card telling me to watch out “in case anything happens?”’ She said, doing the quotation bunny ear gesture with her fingers.

“What do you have to do with this!? You said some agency was invested in my well being, so what agency!? Who’d care about me? I’m a history teacher who’s barely making enough to get by! I’m unimportant, so what gives!?’ She was clearly distressed.

The Doctor’s eyes widened. ‘Who said you’re unimportant? You teach the next generation, you have a wife who cares about you-‘

‘How do you know she’s my wife?’ Cassandra interrupted

‘Noticed the ring. Besides the point, I don’t think I’ve met anyone in my life who didn’t matter. Everything ends up being connected, one way or the other. The question is finding out _what connects you_.’

Oh yeah, alright Dirk Gently.’ She remarked, rolling her eyes.

The Doctor gave her a look.

‘You still haven’t answered my questions.’ She sounded frustrated at this point. ‘What’s your business in this? What agency do you work for? What does this have to do with me?’ She told him with anguish splashed over her face.

The Doctor sighed. ‘That is going to be a long story.’

’I’ve got all day.’ She told him, sternly. It wasn’t true, of course, she had to cook dinner, talk with her wife, pick what they were going to watch for bad move night, but she sounded convincing enough.

’Alright.’ He conceded. ‘Long story short, there’s this government organisation called Unit. I used to work for them, they called me up and asked for some help investigating. Something strange was going on, not to get too “Sci-Fi” for you, but there was this distinct trace of energy. Unlike anything seen in this time.’

‘So you’re a scientist?’ Cassandra asked.

‘Something akin to that. Regardless, I looked at the areas this happened in. I heard rumours of these Shadow-Men that were “disappearing people.” So I got curious and cross-referenced all the disappearances. I noticed a pattern which lead me here. I decided to scout out this part of London, giving cards out to those with a high likelihood of attack.’

‘How did you know that the people who you’ve given the cards to would survive?’

‘I didn’t, but the cards had scanners in them that went off when near the energy signature.’

Cassandra’s eyes lit up. ‘Ah, so that’s how you found me when I hadn’t told you where I lived.’

The Doctor skirted his look away. ‘Well, no. The cards were supposed to scan the energy signature when nearby, so I could get a more in-depth sample than the leftovers I found at the scenes of disappearance.’

‘Oh.’ Cassandra let out. Suddenly the room felt a lot colder. ‘Wait. Why didn’t you tell anyone they were going to be taken away!? You could’ve helped!’ She angrily interrogated.

‘Why didn’t you tell your boss you got chased by a shadow creature?’ He retorted.

She stopped. ‘Oh.’ 

‘Exactly. Speaking of which, can I have the card back?’ He said, he tried to keep his tone warm, though it wasn’t exactly successful.

‘Oh yeah, sure.’ She said, pulling it from her pocket and handing it to him.

‘But that doesn’t answer my original question: How did you find me? The message had only just been sent. I hadn’t even told you my address.’

The Doctor gave her a sudden wide smile, like the grin of The Cheshire Cat. Though that comparison might be more close to home that she realised. ‘That’s the fun part.’ He giggled. ‘Come with me.’ He said excitedly, standing up and gesturing her to follow outside.

‘I can’t, Sarah’s in the shower.’ Cassandra explained.

‘Don’t worry about it, trust me.’ He said, his grin remaining.

Cassandra didn’t know why, but there was something about that grin that was strangely endearing, it was comforting, yet also unnerving. There was a fundamental strangeness about the man before her that just compelled her to go along. Those bright eyes and that wide smile, the movement that felt unnatural, not in the sense that it was stiff or wooden but more in that it didn’t match the way you’d expect a human to move.

Just talking to him was exciting. She thought it was the mystery him. She’d forgotten to ask about why he called himself ‘The Doctor’ or why he seemed to be pretending to be an urban legend. But she felt like the answers would come soon enough. She didn’t want to reveal that she looked him up yet, keep that card concealed for now. You don’t want to reveal your hand too early after all. She still wasn’t entirely sure if she could trust him.

She decided to follow.

He lead her outside of the flat, into the flights of stairs leading down to ground level, there were also a few flights leading upwards. The Doctor leaned over a handrail and pointed down. Cassandra leaned over as well, seeing down a few flights to the floor.

There was a blue police box. It looked like it was made of wood. She couldn’t see most of it, only the torch on its top.

After following The Doctor down the flights, she found herself at the police box. The windows were black with white frames, divided up into 6 squares per window. It was big, it was least a few feet taller than her, and thrice as wide as her as well.

Most of the details were right, the top bore the words ‘Public Police Call Box.’ The side had a sign saying ‘Police Telephone. Free For Use of Public. Advice & Assistance. Pull to Open.’ (Though it was _the wrong side_ which had the sign.) and there was a symbol for the Saint John Ambulance on the other ( _also wrong_ ) side.

The Doctor was now standing behind her. He was trying to gage her reaction.

‘It’s made of wood.’ She said, blankly.

‘What?’ He asked, perplexed.

‘The Police Box, it’s made of wood.’

‘And?’

‘Well, they weren’t made of wood in the 60s. They were made of concrete.’

‘Then how would they open the door?’

‘Only the door bit was made of wood.’

‘Oh.’ He said, dimly. ‘Learn something new everyday I suppose. Regardless, you’ll love what you see inside. Keep your eyes closed though, I want it to be a surprise.’

He placed his hands around her face, covering her eyes before leading her inside. She thought his hands smelt of copper. Once they had taken a few steps inside, he took away his hands.

Suddenly a new layer of reality was revealed, as if her whole life she had ear muffs and a blindfold on, a enfolded false reality of the mundane and ordinary that had suddenly been snatched away from her. Unveiling a new reality of an inordinate amount of wonder and terror. Terrifying yet terribly enticing

‘So...’ He said, straightening the cuffs of his sleeves. _‘What do you think?’_


	3. Bigger on The Inside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to The Good Ship Tardis! We apologise for any inconvenience. Please brace yourself for any turbulence along the ride.

_**The Tardis. 2014. 29th of April. Tuesday. Afternoon. 16:40** _

It was strange. Cassandra had found herself in the middle of a technological marvel, a marvel with at least a thousand moving pieces all interconnecting. A hodgepodge from all different times and cultures. A shimmering gem of wonder and science, it might as well be magic. Hell, it could be magic. Yet underneath all the wonder, all the picturesque beauty, there was something darker, underneath the layers of this strange vessel there had been something stranger still. A sense of calling, something deep and primal urging her to explore into its vast depths, and yet there was a second sense, deeper and even more primal, begging her, pleading her to run away and never return.

The Room was boundless and expansive. The walls were indented with a pattern of roundels, and stretched so far up that, at the summit, each one seemed to merge and weave with one another. There were these two ornate black handrails on either side of the door, leading to the centre piece of the room, circling the centre piece, cutting off behind it, leaving a gap for the rest of the room.

At said centrepiece, was a console. It was all very advanced, quite neo-futuristic in its aesthetic. It was 6 sided, each side littered with all sorts of buttons, switches, dials, rods, levers, and other such. At the centre of the console was a large glass column, fizzing with energy, which went up to the sealing. If there was a ceiling, right now Cassandra felt that if she looked up she’d be looking into infinity itself.

Behind the console was an immense and ample library, very Victorian with its redwood panelling, containing books from the ancient past to books that hadn’t event been written yet. Opulent paisley patterned armchairs sat around. A table with a frighteningly large and frighteningly _messy_ pile of books that looked like it would topple over at any minute lounging on top.

Another table was cluttered by a ransom assortment of vials and liquids of a wide variety. Some were foaming, some bubbling, some fizzing, some doing all three. They were all a completely random array of colours, red, blue, green, yellow, name a colour and it was there. Quite alchemical.

Greek Statues stood forthrightly at each end of the library. One was a man and the other a woman, both robed, their physiques on the level of Olympic Athletes, both holding a set of scales in their left hand and an unlit torch in the other.

There were these hanging metal candlelit lanterns, clouding and overcasting the whole ro-

Actually wait, no. She’d been wrong. Evidently, this was _not_ a room, _this was a realm_ , an entire world in its own right, not a world of places, mind you. _This was a world of functions_ , a plane of existence entirely devoid from the physical.

Regardless, to rephrase; There were these hanging metal candlelit lanterns, clouding and overcasting the whole _realm_ in Persian Blue hues of light, meticulously placed in just the right spots to illuminate all that she could see, if she really was seeing. She had half a mind to think the ‘physical’ place before her eyes was more a filter put on for the sake of courtesy.

Though, if this was a realm of existence, what did that make The Doctor? A Fey who had wandered in and bonded with it? The God that had created it in the first place? Perhaps he was merely apart of it, an extension that it used to interact with the rest of the world? Was it the wand to his wizard or was it the other way round?

As to be expected, Cassandra was stunned. Meanwhile The Doctor was as giddy as a schoolboy, smiling a large toothy grin. Come on, just say it! Bigger on the inside, I know you want to! He was thinking.

‘Well...’ She started, her voice was low and unsure as she tried to get her bearings.

‘Yeah?’

‘It’s... big.’

Oh come on! ‘Oh really? I thought it was quite understated actually.’ He said, dryly.

‘Well what do you want me to say? It’s... big!’ She told him, but the question was still nagging at her. She needed an answer. As much as she liked mysteries, she didn’t like answers. It was fun to be right of course but answers tended to diminish things, but this place was so big that it _needed_ to be diminished.

‘Okay, so how is it done? The whole thing.’ She set the question free.

‘What whole thing?’ The Doctor asked, feigning ignorance.

‘This whole thing! The whole the inside is bigger than the outside thing.’ She specified.

Close enough, The Doctor thought. ‘Do you really want to ruin the magic?’

‘I never really cared for magic as a kid.’ She confessed. ‘It was the ingenuity behind the whole thing I was interested in.’

‘Oh, alright.’ He said, slightly disappointed‘In actuality, it’s quite banal.’ He started to shuffle through his pockets. ‘Ah, here it is.’ He mumbled, pulling out a packet of gum with his right hand and a strange looking rock with the other.

‘On my left is a Lincin, type of currency used a few galaxies away from here. Now, which one is bigger?’ He said, holding them up to her.

‘The Lincin.’ She said. It was obviously so. The Doctor only needed two fingers to hold the packet of gum yet The Lincin was taking up his whole other hand.

‘Good.’ He said, delicately leaving the Lincin on top of the handrail, while still holding the gum up to her. ‘Now which one is bigger?’

‘The Lincin.’

‘Yes, but which one _looks_ bigger?’

‘The gum. But surely you aren’t implying-’

‘Oh but I am implying. In truth, this place is no more bigger on the inside than there are little people living inside televisions. It’s all about manipulating the dimensional perspective of the place, locking your point of view, your spatial reference in place. So from no matter what angle, the gum is bigger than The Lincin, like a magic trick.’

‘But that’s impossible!’ She argued, she didn’t quite no why, this whole place was impossible, the Doctor was impossible, the creature was impossible, but she felt like that there had to be something more than just that.

‘No more impossible than the phone you called me with, my dear. Show someone from 1963 that and they’d say the same. You can access nearly all of human knowledge with the quick press of a button on a tiny plastic brick. There used to be a time where a 2 Megabyte hard drive was the size of an entire room, now you can fit 10 Terabytes of data onto a small SD Card barely the size of your finger tip. Is it really so hard to believe that someone else out there in the universe can do what you consider to be impossible?’

The explanation gave her some comfort, but it didn’t really diminish how big the whole place felt, she did have one thing left on her mind. ‘Wait. You find _that_ banal?’

He grabbed The Lincin, shoving it and the gum back in his pocket, turning away from her, walking towards the console. ‘Never mind. Now, all explanations out of the way,’ He said. ‘I haven’t given you a proper introduction.’ Stretching out his arms like a magician revealing their latest trick.

‘Welcome aboard to The Good Ship Tardis, Professor Brock!’ He turned back to her. He hadn’t shouted, or yelled, or really raised his voice at all, yet his words still seemed to boom throughout The Tardis with the joy he placed into them, ending his words with a cheeky yet wistful beam.

‘You keep saying that, “Good Ship Tardis.”’ Cassandra noted.

‘Well I mean, she is a good ship, isn’t she?’ He asked, tentatively stroking the handrail as if this ‘Tardis’ were a living thing. Cassandra would be lying if she said she wasn’t slightly unnerved by that, she already felt like the place was alive and that didn't help her concerns.

Though what he said wasn’t entirely true. The physical ship itself, was more or less irrelevant, and therefor not particularly good. It was the internal calculations at work, the ‘True Ship’ if you will, which was important.

To simplify, (if one even can for that matter) for all intents and purposes, the ship was less an actual ship and more a structural footnote into history itself. It, no, _She_ was less, something that made movement, but rather, personified the concept of it.

Even the internal form that she had taken on wasn’t really solid, more a in-depth and expansive array of different information networks. Living mathematics, more or less, self-aware equations, integers, and expressions which were winding through the timelines of all those who’d enter. Even if she was accessed through a solid doorway from the outer shell.

‘She stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. She can go anywhere and any _when_. All that will ever happen or ever will, right behind these doors.’ He told her, strutting toward the console. And I do mean _strutting_ , the man looked like he was 5 seconds away from a little tap dance.

‘Wait, so this place travels in time as well?’ She asked, eager to find out more.

‘Of course, wouldn’t have time in the name if it didn’t do something with time now, would it?’

‘Prove it.’ She said with a glimmer of a smile.

‘Alright.’ He said, returning with an excitable smirk of his own.

The Doctor pulled down a lever, before dashing to one of the other sides and flipping a switch, he then ran over to another side and winded up a gear, before pulling out another lever. He did it all with this natural grace about him, this strange elegance, like watching a professional dancer at work slide from position to position.

Seeing him in his natural element brought up something that Cassandra hadn’t noticed before. He clearly wasn’t normal. Not in the sense of acting like a normal person acted, she already knew he was a weirdo when it came to that. This was more that he had this strange, otherworldly presence to him, like he was lighter than he really was.

It was like his body was a barely-sealed container, twitching and ready for release, reining in something ancient and abstract. Different shapes, different voices, different versions of himself, like he was a living superposition between all sorts of possibilities. Nothing obviously wrong, nothing subtly wrong either. It felt there should be be something off or disconcerting and yet there wasn’t, and that was off-putting in and of itself. Like a type of Cosmic-Vertigo, she coined.

As the ship took off, there was this... groaning. Like rusty gears churning, the ancient internal machinery at work, the stomach of an aged beast quaking, like different frequencies of the universe bashing and clashing with each other, fighting for dominance. It was grating on the ears, she had to admit.

Suddenly the ship shook around, Cassandra could feel the rattle inside her bones, she would’ve toppled over if she hadn’t grabbed the handrail.

‘Oh my apologies. I’d forgotten to mention, it’s best to grab something when in-flight.’ He told her lightly, which didn’t exactly shake off the disgruntled look on her face. She was starting to regret getting into this blasted box...


	4. United Intelligence Taskforce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time travelling in time. Always an interesting affair. Especially when you’re dealing with top secret government agencies involving extraterrestrial oddities. Welcome to The United Intelligence Taskforce. Enjoy your time.

**_ London. 2014. 29th of April. Tuesday. Mid-Morning. 08:20. _ **

The Tardis’s groaning faded out, becoming dormant once more. ‘Consider it proven.’ The Doctor let out, quite smugly.

‘You think you’re so outstanding, don’t you?’ She asked him with a laugh.

He gave a sly grin in return. ‘Well I’ve yet to be proven wrong.’ He turned and found himself inspecting a scanner on the console. It illuminated a dim navy blue, hosting the words “ **Traces of Temporal Discharge. Rift-Energy Present. Jumps Between: 2014 & 70204.**” His face dropped.

‘Alright, so where,’ She stopped. ‘No, wait. _When_ are we?’ Cassandra corrected, new form of travel, new form of terminology.

The Doctor jerkily straightened his posture, turning his back before clicking his fingers, seeming to magically open the Tardis doors. ‘Come outside and you’ll find out.’ He offered his arm. ‘Shall we?’

‘Oh I think we shall.’ She told him with a playful smile, grabbing his hand. She could barely feel his grip, like he was made of paper. _Cold_ paper, to be specific. Jesus, he was freezing. He must’ve spent his days digging his fingers into snow if his hands were anything to go off.

They stepped outside, the doors closing behind them. She could feel the gusts of wind blow back against her shoulders as they walked.

The first thing she had noticed was that the sky was a different colour from when she entered the box. Before, the sun was beginning to slink away as evening shadow took hold, slowly deepening into blue and purple hues. But now, the horizon was a lush blue, superimposed by a resting web of clouds from which sunlight barley managed to wash through.

But then it hit her. It was exactly like this morning. ‘We’re earlier today?’ She inquired, gawking in wonder at the world around her, barely just covering her mouth with her harm.

‘Bingo.’ He affirmed. She wasn’t quite sure why, but hearing that was like butterflies appearing in her stomach, or being on a roller coaster just as it’s about to go down the big drop.

Just imagine, being one of the few humans with the opportunity to travel across time itself. Sure, you can fly with planes, traverse the sea using boats, and go across the land simply by moving your legs in tandem, but all that was nothing compared to this.

Though maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t one of a few. The Doctor didn’t make this seem like a rare deal, in fact he was quite unaffected by it. He seemed to only care about her reaction. Who knows, maybe enough time goes by, humans discover how to crack it. Suddenly _Time-Travel_ becomes mundane, just as impressive as getting a cab.

‘Though I’d stop it with the look, people might think you’re a bit thick if they see you ogling all over the place.’ The Doctor commented with what she would soon realise was his typical dry veneer.

Cassandra turned to face him, taken off-guard. ‘Hey, I haven’t done this before in-case you hadn’t noticed!’ She snapped, there was a strong bite to her voice that he hadn’t heard before, yet there was still this sense of her attempting to regather her polite propriety.

‘Apologies.’ He told her.

‘Good.’ 

Cassandra looked around to their surroundings, they seemed to be at a fairly typical British cottage, around two stories in height, surrounded by acres of freshly cut grass alongside pine trees which stippled the land. It was all quite high class: Chimney stacks, ornate windows which jutted out from the main mass of the cottage, there was even a large nearby pond. Though the place had a very distinctive military influence, training camps and that sort of thing. Think Bletchley Park but on a budget.

‘Welcome to The United Intelligence Taskforce.’ The Doctor told her. ‘Or UNIT for short, if you’d like. For all intents and purposes, it’s the ministry of extraterrestrial defence.’ He told her with a wistful cheer, as if the place a sense of nostalgia for days long past.

‘Wait, _extraterrestrial_ defence? Are you saying the thing that came after me was an alien?’ She probed, though what’s interesting was how she looked less concerned and more... examining. As if she’d forgotten she had been chased down by some unholy machination from her worst nightmares and instead was just given a crossword puzzle.

‘It _could_ be. Nothing’s certain yet.’ He answered, carefully choosing his words, he didn’t want to make any assumptions. If one begins to theorise before one has data, one changes facts to suit theories instead of yadda yadda yadda. Sherlock said that, or at least he thought he said that, which was good enough for The Doctor.

The door opened and the two found themselves greeted by a guard. He was as tall as a tree, his face looked like something you’d see chiselled onto a statue in Ancient Greece: jutting strong jawline, piercing eyes, large roman nose, you know the type, like a Disney Prince.

He was clad in black, wearing dark trousers, and a shirt underneath a military vest, with combat boots, and knee pads wrapped around his legs. Though what really stood out was the bright cherry red beret which sat complacently on top his head, concealing all but a slight tuff of auburn hair which poked through.

The Doctor looked up to him, The Doctor may have been tall but this soldier was something else. He offered a polite handshake but the soldier didn’t respond, and without any indication nor explanation, the soldier suddenly pressed his fingers against The Doctor’s neck. Cassandra was naturally taken aback by this, but The Doctor was only slightly agitated more than anything else, like he just stepped in a puddle.

‘I would’ve appreciated a warning, just so you know.’

‘What’s he doing?’ Cassandra questioned, concern embedded into her tone.

‘Checking my pulse.’

‘Why?’

‘ _I’ve got two hearts,_ you see _._ ’ He explained. ‘Inside of me, I mean. Don’t just have a jar filled with them lying in the Tardis somewhere. Surprisingly, it’s quite the unique identifier. Can you believe that?’

‘No way.’ She gasped.

‘Yes way.’

‘You can’t have-’

’I can.’  
  
’That’s impossible.’

’That’s my job description.’

’Wait- Extraterrestrial... You’re not human! You’re an alien, aren’t you?’

‘Appreciate the compliment. Give or take a half and yes, I’m an alien, so-’ he turned to face the guard, smiling. ‘“Take me to your leader.”’ The guard remained stone-faced.

Cassandra was surprised, yet she didn’t know exactly _why_ , she already felt some type of inhuman edge to him, he didn’t move like a human, he didn’t have the same temperature as a human, _maybe she should’ve been tipped off by the bloody spaceship that was bigger on the inside and looked like a crummy police box replica_ , but who knows. What she did know what that being confronted with concrete fact that the man in front of her wasn’t a man at all, (should she even be using Male pronouns?) was just... Weird.

‘Tough crowd,’ The Doctor muttered as the guard rigidly opened the doors, revealing a long corridor comprised of redwood panelled walls, which were lined with different framed paintings of all sorts, and pale grey paisley patterned carpets, with the odd desk at the far side.

As they walked, taking lefts and rights with no rhyme or reason — Cassandra found herself in desperate need for some answers. ‘ _Who are you? _What’s your species? Where are you from?’ She shot out question after question.

‘I already told you — I’m The Doctor.’

‘That’s a title, not a name.’

‘And aren’t they the same thing, really?’

‘Don’t be pretentious.’ 

‘You say pretentious, I say thought-provoking.’

‘Ahem.’ The guard coughed. They had already reached the doors.

‘Where are we even going, anyway?’ Cassandra inquired.

‘I’m giving a report.’ 

‘Oh for god-Can you give me a proper answer, please?’ She snapped.

‘We’re going to see The Brigadier, for all intents and purposes, the head of this organisation. Her name is Winifred Bambera. Is that serviceable for you?’

‘Quite.’ She said, in a tone which could be seen as defensive but wasn’t exactly there yet.

The guard soon left and The Doctor pulled open the wooden doors leading to Brigadier Bambera’s office.

To preface when introducing such a big personality; Winifred Bambera was probably one of the most tough and no-nonsense Unit members to ever grace the organisation, and her office reflected this; It was blank, not unlike a hotel room; there had been absolutely nothing to give off any sense of personality. Which could be constructed as a personality in itself. The walls were beach beige and the curtains olive green. There wasn’t much inside the room, just a desk with an armchair sitting behind it and a velvet red carpet lying under it. On the desk there was a small collection of files and a framed picture of her son, Andrew.

She was a tall woman with dark skin, her face comprised of a large forehead, a soft chin, with harsh brown eyes which laid under faint eyebrows, completed by her sharply defined nose. She was wearing a professional brown suit with a beige tie and a well fitted belt, completed with a sturdy yet worn down metal pin displaying a symbol of the world with metallic bird wings sprouting from its left and right sides.

She was successor to the previous Brigadier: Alistair Leftbridge-Stewart, a strong, stubborn, and forthrightly man who was officially enjoying his retirement as a school teacher, and unofficially in Peru dealing with legends of famed Sea-Devils.

Bambera was quite enjoying the peace and quiet of reading over her newly collected mission files from a recent incident involving a Zygon and a Slitheen in North-London until barging from her door came The Doctor and some hapless looking woman in a suit. 

‘Long time no see, Brigadier’ The Doctor greeted her, walking inside. ‘I’ve found a significant data sample for the recent missing people in London, and an eye-witness account to boot. Meet my friend here Professor Cassandra Brock.’ The Doctor gestured to Cassandra. 

He handed Bambera the card. ‘I’ve done my own personal scans and,’ he pulled out an oddly shaped device which glowed and hummed for but a few seconds before he shoved it back into his pocket. ‘I’ve sent them to your scientific advisor.’

‘Well isn’t that fine and dandy.’ Bambera commented. ‘So what have you found? In Layman’s.’ She ordered. Her voice was direct, authoritative. Every time she spoke it was like a gunshot going off.

‘Well, to put as simply as I’m able:’ He prefaced. ‘Human history is being subverted by its own future. Someone is trying to change the world, so that things further down the line go their way. It’s disappointingly banal.’ He said, rather blankly. Was this really an everyday occurrence for him? Cassandra couldn’t help but wonder.

_That’s_ banal to you? Cassandra thought, she didn’t say it however, but it was probably obvious she thought something to that effect by her widened eyes and wrinkled nose.

‘So how do we stop this?’ Bambera inquired.

‘I don’t know.’ He told her lightly.

‘Oh that’s useful.’ Bambera remarked.

‘The signal is still too faint, even with the fresher sample. I have a year, but no location. It might not even be on Earth for all I know, could be tentacled aliens with three noses’, He explained, pointing towards his nose, ‘and nine ears’changing direction to his ears, ‘from the planet Selbage trying to change human history in a misguided attempt to sell some Uranium flavoured ice cream.’

‘There has to be something.’ Bambera argued.

‘Well I have no ideas at the moment.’   


‘Well, Doctor.’ Cassandra began, The Doctor & Bambera tuned, suddenly being reminded of her existence. ‘Couldn’t we just use your...’ She strained to say it, she didn’t want to say it. ‘Tardis,’ God it sounded so silly to suggest. ‘to go back in time, to when that thing came to me, so you could get a fresher sample?’

‘No, too risky. Going along your own timeline is dangerous.’ He dismissed. ‘ _Very_ dangerous.’ Pointing his finger upwards to stress his point,his tone like a parent scolding their child “NO! DON’T TOUCH THAT, BILLY!”

‘I mean how bad it could be?’ Bambera argued.

‘Have you ever seen Back To The Future?’He asked.

‘Who hasn’t?’ Cassandra asked.

‘I haven’t.’ Bambera answered, to be met by a stare of perplexity by Cassandra, who looked like she’d just been asked who was the prime minister or what colour was the sky. 

‘Imagine that but worse. If you see your younger self sees you, even for just a second, time will change.like that.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Your past will have changed, the events leading you to going back into the past wouldn’t have happened, so you meet me and go here and go back, but you going back means you don’t go back, paradox loop. Timelines are tied up in knots, glitching in and out of continuity, switching between different versions of yourself, being spread so thin that you might as well not exist at all. Not a pretty sight, I have to say.’ He told her coldly, his voice like a hissing rain — it was as if he had personal experience with the matter, and let’s be honest: he most likely did.

‘Well if we just aren’t seen-’ Cassandra started.

‘No. Not allowing the risk.’

Cassandra’s brow furrowed and she had a glint of fire in her eyes, trying to masquerade a feeling of discontent. What the hell was she doing? Sarah was waiting back home for her right now... Well actually not right _now_. Sarah had a meeting with her publisher today, she’d only gotten back an hour before Cassandra did. Sarah was waiting for her back home a good few hours from now. But the point still stands! She’s a teacher, not a secret MI-Whatever-Number-Is-For-Aliens agent. But that still didn’t stop her from arguing. Her heart kept on talking despite her brain’s countless attempts to drag her back, it was like trying to stop someone from walking off a cliff, your feet digging into the ground but you’re still being dragged over the edge, leaving scuff makes in the dirt and your shoes messy. She’d have to live with whatever she says _right now_.

‘Oh come on! Would you rather just sit on your arse and let people die? I thought you were a _Doctor_. Ever hear of a Hippocratic Oath?’ She argued.

‘Well of course I don’t want to let people die but it’s just- ’The Doctor stopped, his eyes dashing away from her view. His words were left hanging in the air. Could he? Was the risk worth it? Why were these shadow men (if it wasn’t just one shadow man doing multiple jumps) doing this? Why did her stare seem to bore into his soul? He didn’t know, he didn’t know what he was up against. Not enough data to make any valid judgements...

Could he really look himself in the mirror knowing that when people were dying he could’ve done more? He’s done worse before, far worse actually. So why did this strike a cord with him?

He sighed before huffing out. ‘Fine.’ 

Whether either of them realised it, this would be the beginning of a truly beautiful friendship, or a truly horrible friendship, or maybe just a really mediocre friendship where you only hang out for a few weeks before you start ignoring the other’s texts and pretending they don’t exist. What do I know? I’m just the narrator.


	5. Snow Globe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A change of scenery, wouldn’t that be nice? A nice little cafe. Surely nothing bad can happen in a twee little place like that.

_ **London. 2014. 29th of April. Tuesday. Early-Afternoon. 14:30** _

‘ _Ohmygod, when will it send? When will it send? When will it send? When will it send? When will it send? When will it send? When will it send? When will it send? Ohjusthurryup, send! Send! Send! Send! Send! Please just send! **SEND!**_ ’ would be the most apt translation of what aspiring novelist Sarah Holland Brock’s thought processes were at the time, as she sat inside her favourite cafe on a warm Spring afternoon.

It was her favourite cafe for a multitude of reasons. It had a nice folksy aesthetic to it, with its wallpaper of an old field and run down farm, the gentle fuzzy warmness from lights which dimly brightened up the room, and how the smell of tea and coffee flooded and stuck to the air like glue. There were but a few other people inside, most of the traction for this place came during the late afternoon.

There was Harold, a carpenter who lived down the road from Sarah & Cassandra, the man was built like a boulder: a big hairy boulder constrained into a white dress shirt and jeans. There was Jessica, a hair stylist. Sarah could probably think of a hundred different words to describe Jessica but the only two which did her any justice was “opulence incarnate”, take that for what you will.And of course — there was Peter, the more or less owner of the establishment. He always made sure to check on how things was going on, always making god awful puns as he did so.

It was this lack of, for lack of a better word, _population_ which drew Sarah to the place, all she wanted was just a quite place to sit down and think. It was only for a limited time of course, but it always gave the place a sense of quaintness. Calm and soothing. Like slowly letting yourself get swallowed up inside a warm bath. So if she got a rejection letter, at least the peaceful energy would soften the blow for her, or at least, _she hoped_ it was soften the blow for her.

The cafe itself sat just in-front of a nice and spacious park, rows of green which were bedazzled with daffodils and violets, with a little duck pond that just had the most adorable fluffy wee ducklings that were so cute with the little innocent glint in their eyes and-

 _Oh for Christ sake, focus_! Sarah thought to herself, deciding to proofread (for the twenty second time) her manuscript.

She twitchily grabbed the laptop from the leather bag that Cassandra had bought a few weeks ago. The laptop itself was quite simple, while obviously an older model it still retained its sleekness. Its black frame was completely barren apart from a tiny sticker of yellow one eyed monster with blue overalls and goggles, (or would it just be goggle?) that for some reason unknown to Sarah, Cassandra rolled her eyes whenever she saw it. So naturally Sarah decided to plaster it on whatever she could.

Regardless, Sarah opened up the file of her draft.

“ _It was useless, he should know this. He ought to know this. And yet here he was, with his fingers tracing a scribbly and messy pattern onto the wall, nails digging into hard brick. This never ending war had gone on forever. One side used bullets, projectiles, bombs. They had countless power and resources immeasurable, their world open to them. The other built holes in reality, doors to worlds of song and smoke, loops which intersected only in the upper higher of the dimensions. The battle was over before it started. You can't fight magic. So what was he planning?_ ”

She cringed. “Upper higher?” You don’t need to put never ending if you’re saying it’s gone on forever, that’s redundant! Ugh! “Scribbly and messy?” Those mean the same thing! As her eyes slowly lurched from word to word, feeling of colossal failure was just building itself up inside of her. 

A minute went by, and then two minutes went by, soon it was three minutes of frantic proofreading, a small part of her imagined a time lapse going by as she waited and read. Until finally an email arrived.

 _FINALLY_! She thought, but just as she went to click, rumbling began in bathroom, this type of churning — like interlocking gears grinding against each other, the scratching of a broken needle against hard vinyl. Sarah turned, that noise was certainly not someone having trouble with their last night’s curry, and as far as she knew, this place had no renovations due today. So what was it? Oh, who gives a rat’s. It didn’t matter to her. Let’s just pray this won’t be another rejection letter. (It was, but don’t tell her that.)

“ _Dear Mrs Brock. We thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your wor-_ ” She began to read, but just as she started, a man had ran out from the bathroom. He was old, mid to late 50s, and dressed like he read a bit too much Anne Rice. Before Sarah could even begin to process what happened, he started yelling. And before she knew it, all that quaintness, twee, and soothing nature started breaking down…

‘Everyone, right now, I need you to leave!’ His voice like thunder, and panic sunken into his eyes, attracting odd looks of bewilderment from all those nearby. ‘Well?’ He pulled a flower pot from his pocket. (How did a flower pot even fit into there?)

 _ **Smash!**_ Broken shards of polymer flecked across the ground. ‘Move!’ He yells, fire brewing in his lungs!

Peter stood from behind the counter, striding towards the man. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ He barked, his face contorted into a snarl.

‘Saving your lives.’ The man returned in a hiss. ‘I have than just one pot.’ 

‘I’m calling the police.’ Peter said, taken aback. Only to be met with an icy stare. Peter will never know exactly why he followed the man’s orders, but there was something in those eyes which terrified him, something deep and other that had seen far more than he could ever hope to imagine. It took but a moment for his face to drop, his eyes to widen, and for him to start running until the cows came home. Most of the other customers followed, but not Sarah. She couldn’t. Her feet were nailed to the spot. She was stone, frozen in place.

The man turned to her, ‘Oh! Hello.’ He noted her presence, the strangely familiar tone of his voice switching from angry warning to unexpected observation. He opened his mouth to speak before clamping his face shut. Whatever words he had in store didn’t matter now. _It was here._

Before either of them could do anything, the air changed directions, and from nowhere came into being, a man made from shadow alongside...

Wait is that-

Cass!?

Sarah tries to say something, anything, but the words are stuck in her throat and her head is throbbing like she had a hundred headaches overlaying each other, it was like every sentence and syllable and sound she could think of were all rushing to the forefront and tripping over of themselves.

The shadow was holding Cass up by just the shoulder, her face strained and her eyes had turned into wobbly blobs of shock and horror. Sarah didn’t know what she was thinking when she threw the laptop at the shadow, actually no, scratch that. Sarah _wasn’t_ thinking when she threw the laptop, (after all, what would that do?) but that didn’t matter. It hit the shadow’s knee, distracting it for a brief second so it could turn its ruby red eyes to Sarah.

The shadow struts towards her, the man stepping in his path only to be tossed aside with a flick of the shadow’s hand.

Soldiers stormed the room, a blur of red and black pumped through the room, pure motion swirling all around, all of her senses overwhelmed. A black woman barged in, gun out, the soldiers swarming around her as she tried to intervene.

The shadow was still holding up Cass, Sarah had to do something. She tried to grab Cass, pull her from the grasp! But before she could process anything which had happened. The shadow had flashed out of the world again, taking Cass, Sarah, and the woman along with it, leaving just the man and the soldiers inside the cafe...

Sarah opened her eyes. Oh god, it was freezing. Like being stuffed into a refrigerator and left to die. Oh god-

Where was she?

It looked like a street corner but the buildings were unreal, bending and twisting like pottery in work, they were made of this type of wilted shimmering glass. Icy wisps of cold white-blue light were skirting by with the wind, stretching out and fraying apart like confetti.

She turned her head, gazing up on the sky. Why was there a dome over the sky? ‘Am I in a snow globe?’ She had to ask herself. ‘Oh my god.’ The words flung out upon realising the absurdity of the question. She’d laugh if it wasn’t terrifying.

Outside of the dome was nothing but a drab cloudless northern sky and cold dead world, the ground (if it could be called that) was nothing but a expanse of razor blades, a land of ice and crystal spiking up and down erratically and stretching far into the horizon. Lightning choked around the dome like coughed up phlegm, combusting and disappearing constantly second after second, and yet the dome still stood. To sum it all up, this place was _**Jagged**_ with a capital J.

She swung her eyes back to ground level, prancing around this nightmare world, looking for any sign there was someone to help. Luckily for her, there was the woman, who was busy picking herself up from the ground, and Cassandra, still sprawled out on the ground.

Once the woman had stabled herself, she turned to face Sarah. ‘Who are you?’ She barked and strode towards her.

‘I-I-I’m a writer’ she stuttered, her voice frail and shrill.

‘Name?’ The woman questioned.

‘Sarah. What abou- what about yours?’ She said, wobbly.

‘Bambera.’ The woman told her. ‘On your feet.’   
  
‘What’s going on?’ She needed to know.

‘It’s a long sto-‘ Bambera began, just to be cut off by the laboured breathing of metal. The doors of these glassy buildings were straining themselves to open, revealing a bright gleaming room which seemed to be a laboratory. Sarah didn’t know that doors could feel effort, but she knew for a fact that the doors sounded like they were on the edge of keeling over. 

A black boot soon stepped out from the doors. Attached to the book was unsurprisingly, a person. A person who was holding a gun; the gun was sleek and silver, but widening at the end like a blow horn. The person were big, physically dwarfing the two woman in all dimensions, though their exact figure was obscured by the wintry black raincoat which had covered any and all specific details, their face was similarly obscured by a gas mask, the eyes were cracked and what could be considered the... snout of the mask had been frosted over. 

Sarah would never be able to describe what she felt when she looked into those cold dusty wide eyes, it was a feeling which coated and stretched and tightened around her stomach, liver, heart, and lungs. It was like being a kid, and seeing your parents sit at the head teachers office in those comfy looking yellow chairs with a look on their faces which meant you didn’t have to ask things like “What’s wrong?” or “Did something happen?” because you just _knew_.

_God this was not good._


End file.
